


_Sucker's Game

by glenarvon



Series: _Brilliancy [27]
Category: Watch Dogs (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hacking, Parkour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-07
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-08 05:15:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4292088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glenarvon/pseuds/glenarvon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deception is a game with few winners.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, a while back, Hardlight (on ffnet) pointed out that Aiden should have his own organisation. At the time, I said it's too much work in terms of writing, but apparently, the idea wasn't going away.
> 
> Please note, I didn't post this for two entire days _because the summary sucks._
> 
> Once again, 'Uplink' is really a game by Ambrosia and I'm pretty much hi-jacking the whole thing of it this time.

[takes place in may 2018]

* * *

Abbott Island was a strange little part of Chicago. Located within sight of the Loop and only a little further from the Wards and Brandon Docks in the middle of the river, it seemed cut off from the glittering bustle all around it. Blume owned the land, but weren't doing much with it.

Among hackers and like-minded individuals, the existence of the Bunker had become a commonplace, but they, too, weren't making a move. No one knew for sure how deep the connections went, whether ctOS still linked up to its old centre and who was watching it all. It was the spot on the map marked as ‘here be dragons’.

Certainly Blume should've been motivated to dismantle everything after Pearce and Kenney used the place as a base of operations. It was good land, it'd fetch a lot of money if Blume offered it on the market, even in the middle of yet another recession, there was enough demand for a new high rise in the middle of Chicago. If Blume wasn't selling, it was because they feared whatever dirty secrets lay buried there would see the light of day. No doubt a justified fear, but they were not doing anything with it themselves, either.

Every so often, development plans surfaced, but they all petered out without much coming from them. Sometimes a rare kind of bird was found to be making its nest in the slowly decaying industrial ruin. Other times, a potential investor found himself facing an unexpected scandal on another front and had to pull out. Sometimes protesters set up shop, demanding the island be made into a park, or converted into affordable housing, or… any number of other things which made the blood boil briefly and was washed away by some newer drama. Abbott Island remained a blind spot, drifting in and out of public awareness.

Mia Perez changed the angle of the screen against the glare of the late evening sun, cutting low through gaps and hollows of the stacked, rusting shipping containers, scaffoldings and crumbling buildings around her. The buzz of the city was a distant humming, far enough away to allow a sense of tranquility to rest over the place. A few birds were chirping in the distance.

She shifted around in her folding chair until it stopped tipping to one side. She was still hot and sweaty, slightly out of breath from her turn at the obstacle course. It was obscenely hot for May, but the soft wind coming from the river helped a little.

A withered camera turned slowly at her command. With one hand, she reached for the cup of iced coffee resting inside an open cool-box. With the other hand, she quickly clicked through the cameras and checked their status.

Strictly speaking, Blume had control of these cameras, but the wiring was a complete mess to anyone who'd ever looked at it closely. Too many hackers and engineers had tampered with it over the years and each one had left tripwires in place for whoever came later. The fact was, if Blume wasn't _supposed_ to see what was going on, they wouldn't. Pearce had his tricks and she doubted she'd seen them all already.

"All set," she said in the general direction of the phone lying by her side. 'Paerce' is said. She’d get around to correcting the spelling, eventually.

_"If you try to cheat again, I'll fire you,"_ Pearce's voice came over the phone, but despite the threat, he sounded amused.

"Not like you're paying me anyway," she pointed out, sucked the straw of her coffee in her mouth.

_"You earn what you deserve,"_ Pearce chuckled.

"You get what you pay for," she countered. She cycled through the cameras until she spotted Pearce, pacing slowly with one of his hands in his pockets, phone on one ear. His gaze was fixed ahead of him and even through the camera feed, Mia could see him mapping out his way. She moved the camera a bit until the first obstacle came in sight.

"I'm ready, by the way," Pearce said finally, glanced up and stared at the camera, taking his hand from his pocket.

Mia tapped the phone to summon the stop watch. "Okay," she announced. "Three, two, _go!"_

Pearce took a running start, dropped his phone into his pocket as he went to get his hands free just in time to vault over the low concrete boulder, swinging on one arm and landing in a run. It gained him just enough speed to catch the edge of the shipping container. He pulled up and raced along the container, swung around the poles of an old scaffolding smoothly and gained enough speed to take another leap at the end.

Two more containers had been staked up across a narrow gap, but leaving a narrow ledge between the upper and lower. Mia knew from experience just how feeble that ledge felt, because you had only the initial strength of your jump and your fingertips to keep going. Pearce caught the ledge, pulled up, got his feet under him and leapt up to the next container.

Mia switched to the next camera and saw as Pearce jumped down on the other side and onto a pile of old cars, swerved to the side sharply, jumped down on one car, but then leapt forward again to make the upper edge of a concrete wall panel. He pulled up and kept his balance easily, picked up speed again, but didn't run all the way to the end. Halfway across, he jumped to the side and caught the lowest rung of the ladder affixed to the crane there. He swung on it, let go and hit the ground running.

Mia had just tapped the button to switch to the next camera when the telltale sound of a nearby bridge alerted her. There were alarms in place, no one should be able to get on the island without any warnings going off, but such things were never foolproof. She looked down the path from the bridge, only distantly aware of Pearce still moving through the obstacle course.

Pearce's gun holster hung over the back of her chair, the gun within easy reach, but she was out in the open. If it was an attack of some kind, she wasn't going to make it to a cover in time.

A white car came down the path, going a bit too fast for comfort, wheels kicking up dry dust as it stopped not too close. Mia lifted her hand to shield her eyes against the low sun and finally relaxed a bit when she recognised the man who got out of the car.

She kept an eye on him, but had to circle through two cameras until she picked Pearce up again, on top of a pile of containers, jumping a gap and vaulting over the rail of a walkway running the circumference of a building. It momentarily took her full attention. Damn, that route had always seemed the more difficult to her. You had to get up really high and lost time doing it, never mind you'd probably break something if you fell.

A shadow fell across her back.

"I know you," Mia greeted the man and looked up. "You're Pearce's fixer. Jordi, right?"

Jordi wagged a hand in the air between them. "I object to the possessive form," he pointed out and added an elegant shrug. "I belong strictly to myself and my vices."

Mia eyed him and said nothing. She'd seen Jordi only a handful of times and she'd never been alone with him. Jordi was hard to judge and Pearce was sending all sorts of mixed messaged. He obviously distrusted Jordi, but he also genuinely _liked_ him. Something about the two of them was in a constant, perfect, but precarious balance, ready to tip one way or the other at any moment. Except, it _wasn’t_ actually tipping at all.

"You called me Pearce's sidekick last time we met," she pointed out, pretending not to be intimidated by him. Jordi looked like white collar crime in an elegant suit, casual confidence and a jaded, laid-back attitude.

Fixers came in all shapes and sizes, but only a select few of them had the bite to last. She had few doubts about this one.

Jordi gave her a toothy grin, "Perfectly accurate description from where I'm standing."

She bit down on her lip and looked back at the screen, glad Jordi seemed interested enough in the display to stop goading her.

Pearce was still high up. He'd left the building behind and was running the length of a container, three containers high. He jumped to the left, to the overturned wreckage of a car. He had to slow down there, as the car rocked under his impact and he had to steady himself. He slid down to the right, hit the ground running, jumped over a wall of old barrels without touching them. He scaled the side of another concrete wall and raced along the top of it.

Two bright red energy drink bottles marked the finish line. Mia took her eyes off the screen and turned to watch Pearce jump down, take a last sprint, vault over a boulder and pick up one of the bottles he went past it.

Dutifully, Mia hit stop on the timer. She didn't want to risk being fired, after all. She'd tried to prank him, once, and he was too good at holding a grudge.

She rested an elbow on the table, watched Pearce slow down and walk the last few steps. He rolled the bottle against his neck before he opened it.

He _seemed_ relaxed, but something about his posture was wrong and his attention was almost entirely on Jordi, not her.

"How'd I do?" he asked, breathing hard. Sweat had glued the T-shirt to him, left dark stains under his arms and down the middle of his chest. He'd caught a sunburn a few weeks before, but it was slowly transforming into a tan hiding the flush of the exertion.

"Ten minutes, thirty-two seconds," Mia read out.

Pearce narrowed his eyes and said nothing for a moment.

"Oh," Jordi chuckled. "That's a _bad_ look."

"Used to come in under ten," Pearce growled and took another sip.

"How's that even a complaint?" Mia inquired, more to herself. "I've never done it in less than eleven. I don't even know how you do it! You're always more winded, though."

A small smile tugged on the corners of his mouth. "Yeah, maybe if you gave it your all, I wouldn't keep outrunning you. I'm twice your age and you're starting to embarrass me."

Mia pulled a face in unwilling agreement. Though, it wasn't really a question of his age, or hers. He was at the height of his training, if anything, coming close at all was a mark in her favour. And it wasn't even only about speed, either. He had a knack for mapping out a route quickly and once he committed, he didn't hesitate or second-guess. Besides, he'd built most of the obstacle course himself, of course he'd know all it's little turns and twists.

Still, it was _just_ training, more for fun than anything, showing off. It would mean nothing if he couldn't do the same thing over unfamiliar ground and under hostile conditions.

"Speaking of age," Jordi cut in. He made an odd move, as if he was about to clasp an arm around Pearce and thought better of it the same instant. He pulled something small from the pocket of his suit pocket and held it out on the flat of his hand.

Mia stood up to see what it was.

"Consider it a birthday gift," Jordi added. "I wasn't gonna put a bow on it or something, but I wiped the blood off."

"It's your birthday?" Mia asked, surprised.

Pearce only shrugged, "It _was,_ couple days ago. Not your problem."

He dropped his gaze to Jordi's hand and Mia caught the sudden flare cross his eyes.

Before Mia could think of any potential repercussions, she reached for the small white cube that sat on Jordi's hand, but Jordi snapped his fingers closed and took his hand out of reach.

"Ah ah ah," he chided. "Adults only."

Jordi rolled the cube in his hand and held it between thumb and forefinger.

"I got this as payment for a job," he explained. "Or rather, as compensation for a job I didn't get paid for, due to employer existence failure, which, before you ask, wasn't my fault. He picked a very inopportune moment to suffer a household accident with a kitchen knife. He never got around to close the deal, so I'm sitting on them. Well, I _did._ Two went to a very promising company in India. I'm serious, keep an eye on those guys. I already bought a few shares."

"It's a drive?" Aiden asked, skeptically.

"A _nano_ -drive," Jordi corrected grinning. "Prototype. Touch and wifi connectable, stores a petabyte of data, and I'm hearing it's lightning fast."

Pearce ignored the dig, picked the cube out of Jordi's fingers and studied it for a moment, then turned his gaze back to the fixer.

"That's worth a fortune," he said.

"Yes, and I already made it by selling two of them. Besides, I don't want to give you a tie, like last year. I hate to repeat myself and you still dress like a fashion victim anyway. You'll appreciate this more."

“Never said I didn’t use it, I just don’t wear it,” Pearce remarked chuckling. He turned over and placed the cube at the side of the laptop, tabbed a handful of keys to bring up the console window. After another moment, he displayed the specs of the cube on the screen.

"Fuck," Mia muttered. "Size matters after all."

"Pretty good, yeah,” Pearce agreed, more soberly, straightened and faced Jordi again.

"Are you sure you have no ulterior motive, some hidden agenda or strings attached?” he asked, growing serious from one moment to the next. "I don't deal in favours."

Jordi held both hands out in front of him and plastered an offended expression on his face.

"No, it's a _gift_ , Pearce. But if you don't want it…"

"I want it," Pearce cut in instantly, almost too eager. "As long as you remember that you don't get to play me."

Jordi huffed, but his friendly mien was rapidly coming off, abraded by Pearce's unrelenting antagonism.

"Yeah yeah, or you'll shoot me in the head yadda yadda blah, Pearce," he said, too lightly for what he was saying. "You realise that you'll eventually talk yourself into doing it, don’t you? And then there'll be two of us who see it coming. Maybe it'll be a birthday bullet next year."

"Make it a golden one," Pearce said plaintively.

Jordi laughed, surprisingly heartfelt. He shook his head. "You got work for me, you call," he said.

Pearce nodded, "Yeah, I do have something coming up, but still needs some setup."

“Oh goodie,” Jordi announced, rubbed his hands together. He tipped a finger to the side of his head, then turned and strode back to his car.

"So…" Mia started. "I sense an interesting story here. More than one, actually."

Pearce settled both hands on her upper arms and shifted her bodily out of the way so he could sit down in front of the laptop, still studying the cube's specs.

"Adults only," he said dismissively. "Both times."

"Well, good thing I am one, then," Mia said, but she already knew Pearce wasn't going to explain anything. She saw it in the way he looked at her from the side, not even bothering to turn his head.

He relaxed slightly, changed the tone of his voice and asked, "You gonna try again? Or do we just agree I won this round?"

Mia glanced over the obstacle course, revised the route she'd seen him take before and wondered if she could at least beat his score today.

“Not a chance in hell,” she said.

* * *

Mia was a college dropout. Not enough stamina, her stepmother assessed, not enough bite, no ambition. She never stuck with anything for long. Dabbled in computer science, acting, martial arts and baby-, dog- and housesitting when the money ran out. Hustling and drug dealing, too, for when she needed some excitement and a bigger buck quickly.

After the college debacle, her family pretty much disavowed her and she'd been on her own ever since. Crashing with friends when she'd lost yet another job and was unable to pay the rent. She worked as a car mechanic, dealing drugs, selling fenced goods on ebay. Through some magic — and a little more skill than most people thought she possessed — the cops had no idea she even existed. She hadn't known how long it would last, or where it would go.

Her first semi-regular job was a part-time gig as security tester for a computer company called Uplink, a social media off-shot for IT freelancers and their clients with a nice slice of Darknet for the less legal, but more profitable kinds of business transactions.

Mia never knew what _specific_ trait of hers had prompted Pearce to approach her, perhaps a combination of all of them. And after working with him, she wasn't sure it said many good things about her character, either. It didn't matter to her, though.

Pearce had been a nebulous figure to her, like for most of the rest of Chicago. His portrayal in the media was all over the place, they never settled on just one version of the story. One moment he was a lone wolf, the next he was a spider at the centre of an extensive web of agents, next moment something in between. She'd heard he was fighting the Club, a week later he was said to have allied with the Club against the Militia. He was a member of DedSec, he was their enemy. Speculation about what he even _wanted_ in all of this was still running high, years after his first appearance.

She suspected he was after Uplink and just found her by accident, thought he could use her in some capacity, but he had yet to ask her to do anything questionable in terms of Uplink. Perhaps he was biding his time, or she was just a contingency. Both were entirely possible.

Running with him as… whatever she was. Maybe Jordi hadn't been all wrong. Sidekick, student… minion and canon fodder? She was fairly sure he wouldn't burn her in some senseless battle, but he _would_ burn her if he stood to gain enough. It was a sobering thought at the end of the day.

When she came home into her tiny, untidy apartment, a woman sat waiting for her on the kitchen table. She looked perfectly out of place, with a mountain of dirty dishes piled up on the counter behind her. The apartment smelled faintly of old cheese after the heat had backed the stale air for an entire day undisturbed.

"I was gonna call," Mia defended herself before the woman could even open her mouth.

Her name was Cox, though Mia hadn't found any indication it was her real name. In fact, all of Mia's attempts to find out more about her had come up empty. Profiler came up with an error message and other image recognition software had failed to find her likeness anywhere online, which in itself was a feat.

"It better have been to report actual progress," Cox said with stilted professionalism.

"Yeah, not really," Mia said. She dropped her bag and stood in the middle of her own apartment, unsure of what to do next.

Cox watched her, calm disapproval and the obvious, unspoken implication of what would happen if Mia failed to hold up her end of the bargain.

It went on so long, Mia finally burst, "What do you want me to do?! Pearce is the most paranoid guy I've ever seen! I mean, for someone who's still able to _function_ and doesn't wear tinfoil! I can't tell you where he is!"

Cox just kept looking at her. "But you see him regularly."

"Yes, so?" Mia frowned. "Doesn't help, does it? That's what _you_ kept telling me. You wanted him unprepared and, well, you probably guessed it already, he doesn't actually do that."

"We are, indeed, aware of the problem of approaching Aiden Pearce undetected," Cox nodded. "He is, however, only human. He cannot be on guard 24/7. He gets tired. He gets hungry. He gets injured, too, I'm sure. He'll catch a cold, or the flu, or perhaps he's just hungover one morning. Now, how comes that you are in his inner circle for an entire year and not _one_ of these, or similar circumstances, has presented itself?"

Mia bit down on her lower lip, feeling her mind choke on too many thoughts at once. She'd put herself in this place, at the mercy of Cox's crystalline lack of compassion and the mysterious collective she represented. If Mia didn't know any better, she'd believe Cox could read her mind, because it was the best explanation for how Cox always knew exactly where it'd hurt.

"Not… like you could use them," Mia said finally. She sensed the displeasure and had some idea of what was coming next, so Mia said, "But, listen, yeah? It wouldn't have helped. It's… like, a wounded animal? He closes up. Doesn't trust anyone then. He doesn't go to friends for help when he's… hurt or something. He pays a fixer, finds some mob doctor or some crooked vet to patch him. Someone who doesn't know him and doesn't have a chance to spill on him. I only hear about it later. I don't know what he does when we aren't together."

Much to Mia's surprise, Cox seemed to find the argument convincing, nodding slowly to herself.

"Perhaps you have to give him some extra incentive to trust you," Cox said after she'd thought it through.

"How the hell do I do that?"

Cox smirked a little. "You are, as I'm sure you're aware, a not unattractive young woman and he is, as I've just pointed out, only human. We imagine…"

"You want me to, what? Seduce him?" Mia interrupted, disbelieving. "Like a… a honeytrap?"

Mia laughed, she didn't feel particularly entertained, but the thought was just too ridiculous. Cox wasn't all wrong, no doubt Pearce had a ton of weaknesses — human or otherwise — but he was careful, too. Mia knew his keeping secrets from her wasn’t even a sign of distrust. It was mere caution and he was doing it to protect _her,_ not just just himself.

"We imagine he must be rather lonely," Cox finished her sentence as if Mia had never interrupted her. "We think it's one of the reasons he has taken you on in the first place."

Mia frowned. Tonelessly, she said, "Do you realise how creepy that 'we' gets after a while?"

Cox smiled a little, as if Mia had just given her a compliment.

She said, "We are certainly aware we haven't given you an easy task. We are only trying to help."

"Never thought I'd get to whore myself out! Thanks for making it happen for me," Mia remarked cheerfully, only to snap back into seriousness. "It won't work. It'll just make everything worse. Pearce thinks I'm a child, he'll either laugh at me or be grossed out and _then_ laugh."

Cox seemed unimpressed. "It's a step up from killing you."

Mia couldn't think of a witty remark to that. For one, it was doubtlessly true. For another, it wasn't especially unlikely if Pearce ever found out.

Cox thought for a moment, then said, “Though, perhaps we were wrong. Not about him being lonely, but about what he seeks. If he thinks of you as a daughter, that might be even better. It is, after all, well-known that family matters to him. You should play it up.”

“That’s cruel,” Mia pointed out, but didn’t expect her argument to sway Cox in any way.

The woman arched an eyebrow, “So is murder,” she said pointedly as she got to her feet, straightened her pant suit. "We don’t exactly care what you do, but we expect you to actually call us next time."

She looked around the apartment, slightly crinkled her nose at the sight and smell. "And you better had some results soon, too."

Cox smiled unpleasantly. "If you don't, we'll let you decide if you want us to kill you, or if you'd prefer Pearce to do it."

For the moment satisfied, Cox said nothing more, stepped around the trash delicately and let herself out in the same way she must have let herself in.

Once Cox was gone, Mia pivoted on one foot and let herself drop on her couch like a shapeless sack. She slung an arm over her eyes and tried very hard not to think of anything much at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Revised on 10/May/2017**


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Totally Relevant Author's Note:** Piiiiiiiiiizzzzzzaaaaaaa! Basically, I'm a single-minded zombie when it comes to pizza. I had to stop writing and _make one._

Most of Uplink's clientele were tech-savvy enough for their safety features to require some sort of finesse, but during her work, Mia still came across the odd engineer who _still_ thought the name of his pet spelled backward was a clever idea. It was work, but not much of a challenge. It was patching here, changing passwords there, plugging that breach and reminding people of less known exploits.

Late in the afternoon, Mia sat in the cool basement of one of Pearce's hideout and hacked _him._ And Pearce's system was a different beast entirely.

It wasn't just because he was paranoid, because he had too many enemies and because ctOS was just one massive breach in itself, designed to observe and record everyone's minute, private detail. Big Brother had _nothing_ on this. Pearce's system was also a patchwork of heavily modified software, running on a customised version of Blume's desktop OS. Whatever exploits the original system had, Pearce seemed to have combed through the entire source code and changed it to his liking. The system didn't behave the way it was supposed to and repelled everything she threw at it.

The rules of the challenge were fairly simple. Get in, find a file, download it, scrub all traces from the system, decrypt the file and play it as proof. Pearce wasn't allowed to physically disconnect, no plucking the cables at the last moment, but other than that, everything was fair game.

She heard Pearce typing from an adjoining room, but only occasionally. She had the impression he wasn't actively fighting her, he was just observing what she was doing. It annoyed her a little, it wasn't the game, he was supposed to try to stop her to make it a challenge, but for now it was hard enough and she wasn't going to complain if it netted her a win.

She suppressed a happy squeal when she finally found a snag to pry her way inside, she didn't want to tip him off.

Wandering around in Pearce's system felt like a relaxing swim in a pool full of piranhas, but once she had her breach, it was just a question of escalating her privileges and go look for the file. It was the first time she had tripped up all day when she accessed the indices without the correct set of administrative rights. The system completely threw her out by shutting itself down.

Mia sat back in her chair, wondering what to do now.

Pearce booted up again and Mia arched her brows, settled her fingers back to the keyboard. Her privileges were gone, but he hadn't closed the original breach she'd made.

She sighed, and started again.

When the file finally started downloading to her laptop she allowed herself a moment of triumph before she dove right back in, hacking her way to the log files. Altering them required a complete new set of privileges. Pearce had to have some kind of superuser account, otherwise getting around his own stuff would just be a pain. She hadn't figured out how to crack that, though. Not yet. She'd probably get another go at it at some point. For now she worked with what she had, piecemeal and altering the logs one careful keystroke at a time.

"Gotcha!" she announced finally and swivelled her chair in a circle when she heard Pearce get up. After another moment, she heard the hiss of the coffeemaker.

She had the downloaded file quarantined and carefully scanned it. She glanced up briefly to see Pearce appear in the doorway with a cup in hand, watching her over the rim.

"What are you cheering at?" he asked, took a sip.

She took her hands down, eyed the scan results.

"I have it!" she declared. "And I got to your logs, too."

"Yeah," he agreed.

It was a simple zipped music file, padded for size, but with no malicious data anywhere in sight, but Pearce's calm made her frown and hesitate.

"It's not encrypted?" she asked. "You said 'decrypt'…"

"You'll have to play it," Pearce reminded her.

She chewed on her lower lip, hand resting on the mouse without doing anything. It smelled like a trap.

"It's a loss if you don't play it," Pearce said. "Aren't you curious?"

"Is it going to blow up in my face?" she asked.

Pearce chuckled. "Probably not."

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and opened the file. It extracted without any incident and the extraction log gave no indication anything unusual had happened. She looked it over again, but it remained just a music file with harmless meta data.

Her frown growing deeper, she looked up and studied him, nonchalantly leaned in the doorway with his coffee, completely sure of himself. Well, more than one way to hack a target, she thought, running the scenario through her head. Let's assume she _had_ succeeded in getting the file and it wasn't rigged. The only way for him to stop her now would be to make her give up a winning game.

She bared her teeth in defiance. He was just messing with her, wasn't he?

"Fuck this," she muttered and open the file.

She barely heard the first second of some song and then the sound cut out. She opened her eyes just in time to see as her screen go black and her computer shut down.

"Oops," Pearce said, sounding insufferably smug.

Mia kicked her chair and it swung around.

"What did you do?" she demanded. She got up, turned back to her computer and tried to boot it, but it wasn't responding. "There was nothing! Fuck! I checked. The file was clean!"

"The file was clean," Pearce agreed. "But your system wasn't."

Mia blinked, glanced over her computer as if merely looking would reveal everything.

"Playing the file was just the trigger," Pearce explained.

"You bugged my system! When did you do that?"

"Wouldn't you like to know."

Mia thought about it, went through her steps to figure out where the mistake had been.

"Shit," she said. He _had_ been messing with her, but he'd let her do most of the work herself, hadn't he. She'd just assumed he wasn't fighting back, but he'd never even pretended he wasn't.

Pearce grinned, shrugged and took another sip.

"You lost, your turn to fetch us pizza," he said. "Extra bacon, extra cheese, black olives. Get going, I'm hungry."

She huffed, but got up and picked up her bag. Pearce kept his position in the doorway, sipping coffee, his gaze tracked her all the way up the stairs.

* * *

"Five more minutes!" the guy behind the counter called and managed to dredge up some semblance of apology while he barely looked in her direction.

Mia leaned on a greasy bar table, flipping through the contents of her phone without actually looking at it. She wanted to get back to her computer and figure out what Pearce had done to it. The longer she thought about it, the more convinced she was he must have had a backdoor for a while. Maybe it had been stupid to think he wouldn't. He trusted her too much, he must have been all over her things at some point.

That was a funny thought, though. He trusted her. The most paranoid person she'd ever met, who she only ever witnessed covering all the angles, always digging deeper than necessary, always thinking things through, planning ahead one more step. He _trusted_ her and he really shouldn't…

Her phone buzzed and tore her from the depressing line of thinking. _Paerce_ , probably wanting to know where his unhealthy food was.

She picked up the call.

"Hey, sorry, they messed…"

_"Mia, shit … don't… come back here!"_

She froze, her breathing got stuck somewhere in her chest, every muscle going tense and her vision seemed to blur briefly from the rush of adrenaline. She could've sworn her heart stopped beating for an entire second and came back at twice the speed.

_"Fuck…"_ Pearce cursed.

Mia had to listen dumbstruck to the sound of shots, then a brief moment of silence, followed by metallic clattering. The sounds were distant, Pearce must have dropped the phone, or tossed it away. She heard more shots, the sound of breaking furniture and computers falling to the ground. She couldn't put the pieces together and form an idea of what was going on.

She was moving before she realised it, ignored the employee calling after her. She hurried back to the car, messily — and illegally — parked on the sidewalk because she hadn't found a better spot earlier.

Something scraped over the floor and she heard breathing, the slam of a metal door.

_"Mia?"_

Pearce sounded winded, more so than she'd ever heard him, he seemed to be moving.

"I'm here, what's going on? What do I do?"

He didn't answer immediately and heard something else shatter, metallic, but she couldn't identify it. Pearce grunted and cursed, hissed in pain.

"Are you hurt?"

_"Been… worse,"_ he answered with a groan that made it hard to believe him. _"I'm bleeding. Listen… I… need you to pick me up."_

She was already behind the wheel, started the engine and began backing out, the phone tucked between shoulder and head. A pedestrian jumped out of her way at the last moment, hurling a few shocked expletives her way.

_"The teardown, down the… down the street,"_ he seemed to still be moving, but his voice was losing strength quickly. _"I'll… fuck this… on my phone, says 'Doc'… you take me… take…"_

He didn't finish and the silence stretched. She still heard some background noise, heard his laboured breathing.

"Pearce," Mia said. "You still there?"

She had to hit the brakes hard at a traffic light, needed a moment to orient herself.

_"Gonna make it,"_ Pearce whispered, raw determination bleeding through, as if he needed to convince himself rather than her. _"Just get… just… help."_

The line didn't go dead. She heard the sound of a struggle, another groan and the phone dropped again. Something snapped and the connection was gone, it hit her like a physical blow and send her mind reeling, trying to make sense of what was happening. It shouldn't be hard, it didn't matter _who_ had raided the hideout, it probably didn't matter. One of his countless enemies getting the jump on him, and he was… what? Already dead? Bleeding out in the street?

Shit shit shit… It was the exact scenario Cox wanted from her, wasn't it. This was _it_. Pearce out of commission, already cut down or at least unable to fight back, unable to spring his traps and play his tricks.

Mia shivered behind the wheel, wound too tense to keep still. For the moment, she was unable to do anything but drive with the flow of traffic around her, stuck as the thoughts chased themselves through her head. She had to do something. She _should._ She should go to the house Pearce had said and hope he'd made it that far. She'd get him to a doctor and he'll be patched up and…. then what? Cox would probably know, because this type of shootout would hit the news eventually and Cox had never given the impression of being stupid, she'd put two and two together. She'd know Mia had wasted the perfect opportunity.

And then? What if Cox decided Mia had served her use? What if she leaked to _Pearce_ about Mia? Would he let her go if she saved him now? If she was honest? In all the time she'd known him, had Pearce _ever_ seemed the forgiving type?

Something, there had to be _something._

But maybe… maybe if she tipped off Cox and Cox sent someone and they'd clash with whoever had assaulted Pearce? He could slip away in the chaos. He had resources, he probably didn't need to rely on Mia, she was just the easiest, perhaps on top of his mind when it'd happened. Perhaps… that'd work? Both Pearce and Cox would think she'd done her part and she'd get out of it.

And perhaps she could get herself to believe it eventually.

Her fingers were still shaking, it was difficult fishing her phone from the passenger seat where she'd dropped it. She'd never called Cox from this phone, it would just be sloppy, but she couldn't drive home first. It might get Pearce killed. It might get _her_ killed, too. Mia had no idea what Cox would do to her once this was over, but she doubted it would be pretty.

She took two attempts to dial, almost took it as a sign to stop, but forced herself through anyway.

"It's Mia," she said.

_"You have something?"_ Through the phone, Cox sounded even more distant and passionless.

"Maybe," Mia said slowly. Even her voice was unsteady. "I can give you the address of Pearce's hideout. He's wounded, but he won't stay there for long. You've got to move fast."

_"We will take a look,"_ Cox said, profoundly unimpressed.

"I'll text it," Mia said and dropped the call immediately. She couldn't handle even one more breath out of Cox, some remark or joke wrapped around that ridiculous plural of hers.

When the text was sent, Mia drove back on the sidewalk, on the edge Millennium park somewhere, glittering dark spread out by her side and the air smelled a little fresher.

She didn't know what to do, she couldn't go there, didn't want to go home and had nowhere else to turn to. Not with this.

She sucked in a deep breath and knocked her head down on the wheel. The slight pain a dull echo in her numb mind. After a moment, she did it again, but it wasn't as satisfying as she had hoped it'd be.

She cast a glance at the clock. Over twenty minutes since her call to Cox, a bit more since Pearce's call.

Steeling herself, trying to calm herself, she took the car back to the road and drove back to the hideout. She took a different route, careful to not just stumble into whatever mess awaited her.

In the end, there was nothing. It was quiet when she drove past the hideout. Every parked car seemed suspicious to her, but she couldn't really tell. Everything was shockingly quiet, contradicting the images in her head, the action film spooling down behind her eyes. She resisted the urge to slow down and give herself away. She circled back around to come at the teardown from the other direction and parked in the shadows.

She fished her gun from the glovebox, checked it, but it was just stalling.

The teardown had been a five story apartment house, once, severely unsafe and crumbling, it sat like a hulking monster set back from the street and it's lights, veiled in unusual silence.

She made her way carefully inside, gave her eyes time to adjust to the darkness, enough to see the dropped pieces of wall and floors piled up everywhere. It felt abandoned, empty. Not even the hobos would use the place.

"Pearce?" she called, though she didn't dare raise her voice.

She walked further, close to the building's outer wall and stopped in an intact doorway, peering into the inky darkness beyond. "Pearce?" she called again, wondering if he was even able to answer.

The sudden buzz of her phone nearly made her shriek. She scrambled to pull it from her back-pocket, suddenly scared the noise would attract attention. Pearce was calling her and she hurried to pick up.

"Oh god, where are…?"

_"You're done here,"_ Pearce said, voice controlled and abrasive. The relief flooding through her turned to ice-water instantly, it crawled up her spine and made her breath stutter. _"Go home."_

He hung up before she had a chance to say anything to defend herself. He knows, she thought. He _knows_ and it's been a trap, a setup just to test her and she'd failed it spectacularly. Fuck, he must have known for much longer than that.

"I can explain," she said to herself, rehearsing as she tapped the screen of her phone with stiff fingers. Pearce's number scrolled over the screen as it dialled. "I'm sorry. Shit, I'm sorry."

A female voice came on, artificially impersonal. _The number you're trying to reach has not been assigned._

* * *

A blackout preceded the attack, the electricity snapped the whole block into darkness. A rundown Wards neighbourhood, bordering on Brandon Docks, vacancies back to back with warehouses and factory sites, populated by people who went home at night or had long since learned not to care. The blackout made some of them walk outside their front doors and gaze in bewilderment up at the smog dome sitting above the city, but if they saw the two black vans that parked on either end of one of the houses, they wisely chose to look the other way.

When the blackout hit, half a dozen armed men got out of the vans and surrounded the house. They wasted no time and stormed the place with practiced efficiency, suppressed guns and bulletproof vests, night-vision goggles over their eyes. Only the sparks of their muzzles was visible through the windows, the sound inaudible even through the thin walls, though sometimes there was the normal bark and bite of a gun, shouts and screams and the shattering of glass. It was over within minutes and the silence coiled back, too thick to be disturbed by the fall of limp bodies and the sounds of their dying.

Cox had made a run for it the moment she realised what was going down. She'd shot a man and made it to the backdoor, she threw herself through, stumbled on the steps and almost fell. Struggling back to her feet, she cast a glance back over her shoulder, gun ready in case she was being pursued, but there was nothing.

She threw herself fully around, away from the house, but she reeled to a stop sharply, before she even could pick up speed, pinned there by the presence of dark shape poised on the path in front of her.

She brought her gun up.

Pearce took a step forward, just enough so the murky orange glow gave a hint of his face, hidden as it was behind a mask, further obscured by the night vision goggles pulled down around his neck. His hands held relaxed by his side, a phone in one hand, the other empty.

Cox withdrew a little, straightened and snapped her second hand to her gun to steady her aim.

He titled his head to the side, just a little, almost as if listening to someone she couldn't see.

A shot cut through the night, sheared past Pearce and ripped her knee apart, tore her leg back with the force of it. She screamed in pain and shock, but before she even had a chance to fall, a second shot hit her in the other knee and her scream ended in a wet, oddly surprised hiccup.

She dropped as both her legs crumpled under her weight, but she gathered herself surprisingly fast, tried to bring her gun back up, but Pearce was far too close already. In a series of smooth movements, he slapped the gun from her shaky grip and slammed a pair of handcuffs on her wrists. He picked her up by the chain linking the cuffs as he went past her and dragged her with him.

She howled as her destroyed legs scraped over the old wood of the stairs. She struggled, but couldn't muster the coordination for actual resistance, spasms ran the length of her from shock.

By the time they were halfway along the hallway, her body went limp and silent, broken only by shudders, quiet whimpers escaped from her lax mouth.

In the kitchen, Pearce let go of her and her arms dropped to the ground, as limp as the rest of her.

He ignored her for the moment to take a look around the destroyed kitchen.

The other fixers were still busy securing the house and making sure no one had gone into hiding somewhere.

"We're all clear," one of the fixers reported and Pearce only nodded.

"We'll clean up the bodies," the fixer continued, he glanced down at Cox. "Should we take her, too?"

"No," Pearce said. "I got plans for her."

It was too dark to see the fixer's expression, but there was a minuscule pause before he shrugged and turned away. He called a few quiet orders to his men, who began to gather the corpses and quickly search them before they carried them off to the vans.

"This is like breadcrumbs!" Jordi announced as he stepped into the kitchen. His shape was made distinctive by the spike over his shoulder, the sniper rifle he carried. "Except it's a river of blood, my favourite kind of safety hazard."

"You didn't have to shoot her," Pearce greeted him.

"She looked like she was about to blow your head off," Jordi said and shrugged. He took an elegant step to the side, giving the fixer some room to drop a handful of phones and a tablet on the table.

"All they had on them," he said.

"Good," Pearce said. He glanced around to assess the situation and told him, "You should get clear, I have to turn the power back on, we're starting to attract attention."

The fixer nodded and he and the others left quickly. No doubt some of them had pocketed a few of the weapons or other valuables, but they wouldn't be stupid enough to withhold any smart devises. After some very bloody incidents, Chicago's fixers had learned to accept him as deadlier and more dangerous than them. Everyone who still tried him was either a complete amateur, a complete madman or not from Chicago. The fixers were quite happy to work for him and take his money these days. Those who held up their end of the deal got paid very well. It wasn't _safe_ by any stretch, but it was a step up from everyone and their dog gunning for him. Now he only had the bigger players to worry about.

It also somewhat limited his body-count, though he was no longer certain it made much of a difference.

"That's the contract," Jordi insisted. "I got your back. Because if it's _not_ , we need to talk about that. If you just want someone to watch you through a scope, I'm afraid you need to find someone else."

Pearce pulled off the night vision goggles and dragged the mask down, then reached for his phone. The white glare caught in his face, light and shadows crawling in every crevice of his skin and settling behind his eyes. He tapped his phone and a moment later the lights flickered back on to reveal the true extent of the carnage.

"You got a first aid kit?" Pearce asked. He went through the kitchen cabinets quickly. "If she bleeds to death she'll be useless."

"Though I once stalked this rich guy's daughter for a week," Jordi continued. "It was all prep work, of course, because he wanted to fake her abduction and use the insurance money to save his company. He thought the stalking would make it more credible…"

Pearce shot him a look and Jordi changed the end of his narrative into a long-suffering sigh.

"I got one in my car," Pearce said. "Can you fetch it?"

Jordi narrowed his eyes, but for reasons of his own, decided not to argue. He stepped around the puddle of blood of blood.

"You're paying for that," he said back over his shoulder.

Pearce nodded and waved him off, barely paying him any attention.

He reached down and hauled Cox up and stuffed her in a chair. The pain of the movement brought her back out of her daze and wailed, took panicked breaths and flailed her bound arms, clearly disoriented from pain and blood-loss.

Pearce slapped her arms down and closed a hand around her throat, leaned in over her until she stopped, forced to focus on him and the constriction of her throat stopped her hyperventilating.

"I'll patch you up," Pearce said when she seemed in a condition to understand him. "But you've got to work with me."

He released his grip slowly, to make sure she had time to understand the power had shifted and she was no longer in control.

Cox blinked slowly. Her face had gone pale, covered in a sheen of cold sweat. She shifted a little in her seat and then whimpered when the movement brought the state of her legs back into brutal awareness.

Pearce ignored her for now. She needed bandages and a small dose of painkillers, enough to dampen some of the pain, but not so much she wasn't lucid anymore. Besides, a little pain would help loosen her tongue.

For now, Pearce took his phone, scrolled through the apps, tapped on the screen. As one, the phones and the tablet on the table lit up their screens, eagerly transferring their data to him after he prodded the weak spots in their security.

"What about the others?" Cox asked in a thin voice, but surprisingly coherent.

Pearce barely glanced up. "Oh, they're dead."

Her eyes went wide, but she seemed too gorged on shock to react otherwise.

"Marianne," Pearce said, still looking at his phone. "Cochran, goes by the name of Cox."

She blinked at her name, bloodshot eyes, struggling to focus on him.

"Out of Indianapolis," Pearce continued. "You run a neat band of bounty hunters. That's a very impressive record you've got there."

He looked up.

"Well, _ran,"_ he appended cruelly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Revised on 10/May/2017**


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm getting the impression Aiden is a member of the 'hitting women is a special sort of crime' school. The game certainly hints at it. I'm flushing that part of his characterisation down the loo, because that's where it belongs, I don't care if it contradicts canon.

Mia was still alive. She was still alive when she left the ruin and got into her car with a haunted look on her face. She was still alive when she parked her car outside her apartment building and she was even alive by the time she finally got home and snapped the door closed behind her.

It didn't quite compute that way. She'd had herself convinced Pearce would kill her if he ever found out. The film of it had played in her head every time Cox oh so gently reminded her of why Mia wasn't going to backstab Cox. Pearce wouldn't forgive this kind of betrayal and moreover, he probably couldn't afford to.

Mia turned on the television in an attempt to drown out the thoughts screaming in her head. She couldn't make sense of them anyway, she didn't know what to do now. She could go on with her life, her boring job, her drained bank account and her wonky circle of friends, online and in the real world.

All that and she was glad he wasn't dead, even if it would solve most of her problems. She had never wanted him hurt. She liked him, his quick mind and parched sense of humour. Working for and with him was a roller-coaster ride and it had been too easy to get used to it, but she'd got it all backward. They'd started on the wrong foot and she'd never figured out how to reverse it.

The TV droned on, some reality show and commercial breaks that felt like they lasted half an hour, trying to sell her chocolate and cars and insurance.

After a while, Mia collected herself from the couch and found the phone she used to call Cox on. It was the second best thing, because Pearce had made it clear he didn't want her to contact him, but the silence from Cox was equally worrisome.

The call went to voicemail and Mia dropped the phone by her side, folded her feet under her and settled back on the couch, failing to get comfortable. No Cox, no Pearce,…

A news broadcast came on, but nothing that held her attention for more than a fleeting second, just colour and white noise, beating through her mind.

It had been the middle of the night when she'd come home, but it took hours until she started crashing. The tiredness slipped up on her as the adrenaline in her system ebbed out. She fell asleep, or at least dozed for a while and came to with a dry mouth and a throbbing headache, momentarily disoriented and even her body felt alien.

There had been a knock on her door, her mind informed her belatedly and just in time for the knock to come again.

Mia was awake instantly, she jumped to her feet, but nearly dropped back down in a sudden, nauseating bout of vertigo. Another knock and it was eerie how the rhythm hadn't changed.

As quietly as she could, Mia slipped to the door, leaned in to peer through the peephole.

Pearce.

Looking both calm and furious at the same time.

Mia wrapped her hands around the handle of the baseball bat leaned against the wall by the door and stepped back. Swung the bat once experimentally, then reached out with one hand to unlock the door very slowly in the hope the clicking didn't give her away.

She took several careful steps back, as far as she could go. If she had a gun and the guts, she could've shot him through the door, but she'd forgotten her gun in her car.

"It's open," she called, both hands on the bat.

Pearce didn't burst through the door, the way she had imagined. He simply opened it and stepped inside, barely paused when he saw the bat raised over her shoulder. He pulled the door closed behind him, locking them both in. And just like that, the rest of the world became unreachable for Mia, she'd have to go through him to get there.

Mia flexed her hands on the bat, checked her stance, but Pearce was careful to stay just out of easy range. He stepped to the side, paced in a half-circle in front of her and let the menace built on its own in the fake silence. The TV chattered on meaninglessly in the background.

"What?" he demanded, growl so deep she could feel it in her bones. "What did I miss?"

She shuffled her feet to keep facing him. "It's a long story," she said.

"Listening."

She hesitated, part of her hadn't expected him to give her a chance to defend herself and for a moment she felt ridiculous with her baseball bat. They'd sparred, she wasn't going to bash his head in with the thing, not even he somehow slipped on a piece of her trash and give her an opening.

"You know about the chicagovigilant site, right?"

"It's harmless."

"No… that is, it used to be, I guess," she shook her head.

"They're just groupies."

"It was bought by Uplink, about two years ago. And Uplink also backs the Grid," she said and stopped. Like he didn't know _that_. But he must have missed the rest if he didn't know about the change in focus of chicagovigilant. He was right, it _had_ been a fairly shallow platform for fans of the vigilante, a community site only peripherally monitored by Blume and Bloodhound, on the off chance anything useful turned up there.

"They offer money for people who know anything about you. It's a community thing, like if you have good stuff you get awarded a bigger bonus. It's just a game. I mean, that's what everyone thinks."

Pearce paced back, kept his gaze fixed on her, traced it up the length of the bat with mild curiosity.

"You sold information on me," he stated.

"But never anything big! Never anything that could really hurt you!"

It sounded cheap and defensive, something anyone would say in that moment without meaning a word of it.

"Please," she tried. "I'm sorry."

It was entirely the wrong thing to say, she realised it the moment it left her mouth. Or perhaps he'd just waited for the right moment, when guilt made her gaze skitter away. Pearce sprang and her living room was nowhere near large enough to make it difficult. She managed to swing the bat barely an inch, never got enough power behind it, Pearce simply caught it with one hand, punched for her face with the other. Mia brought her elbow up awkwardly in an effort to deflect it. She lost her grip on the bat and Pearce snapped it from her hand and pulled it down. He stepped forward, too close, hooked a leg around hers and toppled her.

Mia tried to twist away, leap back up and out of reach, but found no good footing and Pearce wouldn't let up. He ripped the bat free and knocked it down, caught her chin and then her throat as she fell.

She hit the floor hard, desperately trying to catch a gulp of air while rolling away, up on her knees and she almost had it, but Pearce brought a knee down on the small of her back, caught her flailing hands in a bruising grip.

"Stop struggling," he snarled, leaning over her with his full weight. He didn't have to threaten, Mia did as she was told, she let herself go limp, dropped her forehead on the ground and lay still.

The moment Pearce sensed her capitulation, he let up, giving her a moment to breathe once his weight lifted off her. Then he yanked her back up and tossed her on the couch.

Mia made no attempted to get back up. Her spine stung, her throat felt too tight and the bones in her wrist already ached, glancing down, she saw blood rush back into the pale marks.

"Show me," he said, keeping her pinned with his gaze.

"What?"

"I want you to show me everything you gave them," he said slowly, like speaking to an idiot.

She sat up a little more, trying to ease the persistent pain in her back by nestling into the cushions.

"I've been using a tablet," she explained. She'd been careful with it. She'd never used it anywhere near Pearce and it was always off and stashed away.

She took a breath and looked across the room. "The drawer under the TV."

Pearce glanced at it, gauging the angles before he moved, made sure he kept her in his sight as he went over and pulled the tablet out. It booted in his hands, but he put it away and pulled his phone out instead, used it to access the tablet and browse her data.

His expression was still made of stone, impossible to read his intentions. She'd lost her chance to fight, but if she was honest, it had never been much of a chance to start with.

"I'm sorry," she said again, it came out in a croak and she coughed, trying to dislodge the lump in her throat.

This time, Pearce ignored her, focussed on the data.

Mia knew what it was she'd been selling, but it was harder to anticipate what Pearce would make of it. Which piece of information with his name attached was he _okay_ being sold, even if it was just for some easy bucks and didn't endanger him? To a bunch of groupies, as he'd called them? Mia wouldn't be too confident about it, and it wasn't even what had happened. Fixers and bounty hunters from across the country had been invading the website for a while, gleaning what useful information they could and slowly reshaping the community. Unlike Bloodhound, they weren't hampered by any red tape. Bribery and extortion was just fine for these folks.

"Can I do something?" Mia asked. "To make up for it?"

Pearce gave her a long look, said nothing until she looked away, and he returned his attention to the phone.

Mia forced herself to be patient. She didn't feel too good, but decided it was probably better than annoying him more.

She watched the digits on the TV change, watched a commercial for shampoo and concentrated on the slow crawl of time until suddenly Pearce seemed to be done. He took the phone down and put it in his back-pocket.

He stalked towards the door.

"Come," he said.

He stopped by the door, looked back at her and she pushed herself to her feet immediately. She hadn't even taken her shoes off when she'd come home last night, but as she got up her gaze passed over the baseball bat. Pearce noticed it, too, but didn't deign to even comment on it.

He opened the door and she had no choice, walked ahead of him down the hallway, hit by the stifling heat that pushed a thin sheen of sweat on her skin the moment she left the comparative coolness of her failing A/C. She had no keys with her, no money, no phone. She considered asking if she could pick them up, but decided not to. It didn't seem all that important right then.

In the elevator, she kept herself pressed into the farthest corner, but she still stood uncomfortably close to him and the elevator was small and hot.

"I checked your accounts," Pearce said, taking her by surprise when he sounded close to normal.

"Fake identity 101," Mia said. "It's just an online payment account, no one checks them."

"I do."

"Well," Mia said sullenly. "You missed that one."

Any other time and the thought would have made her feel good, adding a strike to their imagined tally of one-upmanship, but it wasn't a victory she could cash in on.

Pearce let her to a white car, parked in the shadow of a building. He let her get into the passenger seat and locked the door with a tap on his phone the moment the door closed. Mia flinched at the sound, but took it lying down. She was slowly coming to terms with this thing he had going, since he seemed to be planning something other than just straight-up murder. She was unsure if she'd _like_ it much, but it likely beat immediate death.

They drove in silence for a while, just the traffic flowing with them and around them, the glare of the rising sun in their faces. Pearce held a hand in front of his face when he got blinded, then fished a pair of sunglasses from his side.

Mia just kept holding her hand in front of her face and turned her head to the side, watched Chicago pass her by outside the window.

"Why?" Pearce asked.

Mia laughed, not because it was funny, but because the truth just seemed incredibly absurd now.

"I was scared of you," she answered. "I know that makes no sense."

"It doesn't."

Silence again, though slightly less suffocating than before. After a while, Mia said, "I didn't realise I was selling that stuff to bounty hunters. Not at first. I thought I could make some money and most of these guys are harmless. I wasn't… I never gave anything important away."

"You posted a picture of my rig."

Mia smirked before she realised what she was doing and wiped the expression from her face. She was still looking out the window, she hoped he hadn't seen it.

"Yeah, that was a good one. But I never took a pic of you, thought of it, never did it."

"But you took one of Abbott Island."

"Everyone knows about the Bunker anyway. They think it's your secret lair."

"It used to be," Pearce said and for a moment she almost thought he was smiling.

Mia blinked slowly in the sunlight, rolled her forehead against the glass, then cast a quick glance in his direction.

"People started figuring out I wasn't just some random chick who spotted you somewhere in Chicago. It was obvious I had real access and the fixers figured out they could use me to get to you. Or bounty hunters, or assassins, or… I have no fucking idea what they even were." She paused. "Bad people, anyway."

He was bad people, too, of course, but there seemed little point in belabouring that and hardly contradicted her original argument.

She continued, "By the time I figured out what was going on… I was in too deep. And there was this woman, she showed up one day at my door. I have no idea how she did it. I'm good at erasing my digital footprint, she shouldn't have been able to find me through chicagovigilant. But anyway, so… she knows I'm working with you and she _also_ knows I sold all that stuff on you. She threatened to expose me. I mean, to you. She'd have told _you_."

"That's all?"

"She's pretty creepy, actually," Mia said. "It just never registered that I didn't have to do what she wanted. It felt like I had no choice. And you… well…"

This time, she really laughed and took her head away from the window, straightened in her seat. She looked at him again, it was easier now, not only because he was concentrating on the road.

"I just wasn't sure what you'd do if I told you."

His face was serious, but it wasn't quite the same unfeeling mask anymore.

"You knew," Mia said, trying and failing to not let it sound like an accusation.

"I suspected," Pearce corrected quietly. "Something was off."

"You set me up," Mia said and laughed a little to herself, dropped her head into the headrest. "I never had a chance, did I, between Cox and you. But… I didn't sent Cox after you. I send her to the hideout, you said you weren't there anymore. I thought maybe if Cox showed up there, it'd give you a chance to slip away. I didn't want to betray you. I just didn't know how to unfuck all of it."

Pearce made no answer and the conversation petered out again. It sounded so dumb, saying these things aloud. It should maybe make her feel better, a great weight off her chest and all that shit, but it wasn't. Things were beginning to feel like an ending.

They were leaving Chicago behind, too, the city fell away from the sides of the highway.

Mia said, "Where are we going?"

Pearce ignored her, but after another minute, he said, "You stupid kid, you could've told me."

She bristled a little at being called a kid and she didn't know what it meant, either.

"After I'd been ratting on you for months? Since practically the moment we met?" Mia asked. "I may be stupid, but I'm not suicidal."

"I can't trust you now," he added.

"Obviously."

She felt his gaze pass over her, almost tangible and it caused a ripple of tension. The silence crawled back, filled the car to bursting.

Mia eyed the radio, but even though all she had to do was reach out, she didn't. It'd chase away the silence, fill her thoughts with something more sensible, even if it was just some cheesy pop song.

She watched the landscape rush by outside the window, wondered what endgame he had in mind. She didn't repeat the question, though, if he'd meant to answer, he would've done it the first time. After about a two hour drive, he suddenly switched to the right lane, cutting too close and going too fast, taking the car off the highway and into a rest area.

A handful of cars were parked there, people wandering to and from the toilets, stretching out beside their cars. Pearce's driving pulled a little attention with them, Mia saw it as they went past, but she didn't think it'd any of them would come over to bitch. Someone might remember them, though, if something happened later.

Pearce parked the car beside a black sports car and killed the engine. Once even the humming of it was gone, Mia snapped her head around, too tired to keep playing that game.

"What do you want me to say?" she asked, then shrugged. "Or _do._ Or anything."

"The woman you know as Cox, she's a bounty hunter," Pearce explained, rather unexpectedly. "She had a band of six people working for her. She liked to play it clever, take on marks when they don't expect it, she raked in quite an income that way."

Mia remembered she'd been unable to reach Cox the night Pearce had… what? What had he even done? Set her up? Or Cox? Or the both of them, just because it was most convenient doing it this way? Either way, the trap had snapped closed flawlessly.

Mia studied his face.

"What happened to her anyway?"

Pearce's expression changed in slow motion, he had done nothing to hide his _anger_ at her, but it was the calm she couldn't figure out. Now he bent her a small cruel smile and he didn't let it linger, either.

He opened the door and got out and having no idea what else to do, Mia followed. She watched him above the roof of the car as he strode along it and waited until she joined him, stepping to his side with the caution of someone walking on thin ice.

He cast only a quick glance around, barely enough to make sure no one was observing them, and the surveillance cameras weren't angled to catch the back of their car.

"Marianne Cochran, actually," Pearce said as he opened the trunk.

"Shit…" Mia whistled through her teeth, inappropriately.

For Mia, Cox had been an intimidating woman, imposing, charismatic and clearly ruthless, someone who knew how to keep secrets. She'd looked the way Mia imagined some secret government agent or corporate assassin to look. Bound at hands and feet, gagged and pale, she was nothing but someone's roadkill. Both her knees were thickly bandaged, but the blood had seeped through, crusted in ugly brown, leaving a puddle of it on the plastic sheet she was lying on. She reeked of death, covered in a sheen of sweat, face sickly pale and lax.

Mia was certain she was dead, but when Pearce placed two fingers to the side of her neck, a tremor ran the length of her body, though she didn't come to.

"Still alive," Pearce stated with mild surprise, he'd be commenting on the weather in much the same tone.

Mia felt watched, the weight of the people not far away pressing on her, the camera eyes constantly sweeping over them, making the back of her head burn. Pearce wouldn't stand there so calmly if there was any actual danger, but reality never had much bearing on paranoia.

"Jordi tried to kill me once," Pearce said and Mia's attention snapped back to him. He put his hand on top of the trunk, but was in no hurry to close it.

Mia blinked between him and Cox and back, thought of Jordi and his stories and his swagger and the casual death in his laughing eyes.

"How are you both still alive?" she asked and her curiosity was almost entirely real. She had no resources left to contemplate Cox. The woman had made her bed, one way or the other. She'd chosen violence and violence had finally caught up with her. Mia didn't know if she herself counted as much the same, she saw herself as an outsider, despite everything, but perhaps it was just a lie she told herself. She had no idea what that truth meant to Pearce, or what lies _he_ had to tell himself to keep going.

Pearce said, "I can always trust Jordi to be Jordi."

He dropped the trunk lid.

Mia took a deep breath. "What's all of this?" she asked. "What's it supposed to mean? What are you gonna do to me?"

Pearce didn't answer immediately, but his expression was allowed to soften, just a little as he studied her.

"It's my mistake," he said. "I let you get too close."

Mia sighed, she hadn't realised just how exhausted she was before she did, letting her shoulders hang.

"Can't you just say it?" she asked, resigned to whatever retribution he had intended all along.

"You aren't going to return to Chicago," Pearce said, voice hard again, the softness all gone from his face. "And I suggest you pick a new career. You don't get in touch with me again. You don't come looking for me. You don't even google me. You see me on the news, you switch the channel. These are the terms. Are we clear?"

It'd be ridiculous if there wasn't a threat riding the undercurrent of what he was saying, if he wasn't entirely willing to live up to any gruesome fantasy she might be entertaining. He just needed the right provocation.

He placed the car keys on the trunk and Mia briefly glanced down, her attention glued to the trunk not because of the keys at all.

"And Cox?" she asked.

She sensed rather than saw him shrug, heard the traces of smugness.

"Your problem."

It didn't register what he was doing before Pearce turned and strode away, around the black car they'd parked behind and Mia heard the telltale clicking of its locks.

Mia broke through her trance, hurried after him and got him to stop at least.

"Wait, you can't just leave me here," she said. "I don't have a phone! I don't have any money! Or ID! I have _nothing!"_

She thought about that and added, "Well, nothing _and_ a corpse that isn't quite dead, yet."

The look Pearce gave her was entirely devoid of sympathy, but he considered her for a moment, one hand already resting on the door of the car.

"It's punishment, Mia, you've got to feel it," he said. "You wouldn't like the alternative."

Mia looked back at the trunk, pictured herself stuffed in there alongside Cox, perhaps still alive, too, just long enough to realise the hopelessness of the situation. Cox needed a doctor and soon, but that'd raise so many questions, Mia didn't even know where to start. It'd be the smarter choice to just leave her behind, it wouldn't be long before the Cox problem solved itself and Mia was certain Pearce had erased all traces of linking Cox to him, there was a good chance there was nothing leading back to Mia, too, rescued by mere association.

Mia wasn't sure she could do it. Already she saw Cox every time she closed her eyes, how broken she was. No one deserved to die in the trunk of a car.

While Mia still contemplated her next move, Pearce had got into the car and Mia flinched when he backed up then stopped hard just before the car touched her legs. The brake lights flared up, then faded again, as he waited for her to get out of his way and no doubt his patience was running low.

Mia looked up, caught his gaze in the rear-view mirror but the cutout was just as unfeeling. Bracing herself, Mia opened her mouth. It could have been worse, Mia thought until she remembered Cox and all the problems he'd saddled her with. He'd ruined her life just as surely as if he'd shot her between the eyes.

In the end, Mia stepped aside after all, she didn't dare not to and Pearce's car slid smoothly from the parking spot, turned and accelerated back to the highway. She was sure Pearce hadn't even given her a last glance.

When the black car was finally out of sight, Mia looked around at the people around her on the parking lot, though none of them were paying attention at all.

She'd always been a drifter, but this was something else. She'd never been more alone, never felt so thoroughly lost as she did in that moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Revised on 10/May/2017**


End file.
